Haven (20 page)

Pushing myself up, I nodded again. “Ready.”

We made our way around the next set of buildings and across the street into a meadow. Being completely exposed forced us to remain crouched and silent until we crossed over into a residential subdivision. From there, we stood a little higher, but still didn’t speak.

He moved sinuously around the houses, through yards, and across porches, only pausing every once in a while. During these stops he didn’t move his head in search of whatever had piqued his hearing. He used his other senses, and I was left assuming this was because in such close quarters, with the houses so close together, sight wasn’t his preferred use of defense. His nose and ears apparently covered a great range. Once he took my hand and led me around the corner of a half-burnt Nantucket-style residence to the backyard. There, while hidden in the brush next to the driveway, I picked up on what he’d been alerted to as their feet – a large group of them – made their way down the street. He then gestured for me to follow him again, which I gladly did. He was my spotter, as good as or better than any set of binoculars, canine alert unit, or amplifying device. If anyone could get us through this and safely back inside the school, it was him. It was somewhat satisfying to my ego that he tracked the same route I had taken to leave.

Until we ended back on the south side of the school, wedged between the two buildings, he didn’t say a word to me. But when we reached the school grounds, he held his hand out and whispered, “Keys.”

I pulled out the ring of masters holding the key to open the gate, but he shook his head. “Both.”

That was when I knew. He had heard Old Boy’s car alarm going off earlier in the morning. It told him that I was up to something. And he had spent the entire time since then trying to track me down. This was why he was outside the school and why he’d found me in the industrial complex. He’d been looking for me.

A wave of guilt washed over me as I realized how much danger my mission had put him in. And it was coupled with astonishment, and full-fledged awareness, knowing the risks he would take to save me.

Unable to meet his eyes, I handed him Old Boy’s keys and he turned back toward the school. Using the same tactic I used to clear the Infected, he hit the alarm button and they went running again around the corner toward the main entrance where Old Boy was parked.

We slipped out from the buildings and raced across to the gate, where Harrison inserted the key and opened it. Responding to his strength, it slid easily and I was about to step inside when we were hit.

There were no growls or grunts this time. They were too busy using every bit of effort to reach us. They attacked with a stealth I hadn’t seen before or expected, and we were completely unprepared.

Harrison detected them, raising his head at the last second. But the first one had reached us by then, almost tackling him. The man’s hands slammed down on Harrison’s arms, which still held the gate, and used that leverage to finish his lunge. His open jaws came dangerously close to Harrison’s face, but my side kick to the man’s waist sent him off balance and gave Harrison the time needed to retaliate. Then the second one was on me, shoving me backward and nearly off my feet. If it hadn’t been for the gate, I would have collapsed. This one was twice my size, which I registered simply by his force. So I used his weight against him, rotating out of his extended grasp and around his body, allowing him to fly into the gate. I used another side kick to take out his knee, which caused him to drop to the ground. That didn’t deter him much, but it bought me time, which we were dangerously short on at the moment. I knew this as I looked up and found an entire mob of them coming at us.

In the back of my mind, I processed two realizations fairly quickly. First, Harrison didn’t seem to need my help. He was doing an impressive job of finishing up his attacker with a quick snap of his neck. Second, the gate was still open. If we didn’t close it up, we’d literally have just rung the dinner bell and our friends inside would be the main course.

I found the AR-15 on the ground, picked it up, and leveled the front sight at the horde approaching. Then I pulled the trigger and found that we’d been given a brief reprieve…the AR was an automatic, spitting out a steady stream of rounds.

Thank you again, Mr. Chow.

A good number of those advancing on us fell, maybe about half, but I couldn’t get them all. Harrison knew this and had already taken me by the waist to drag me through the gate. By the time the Infected reached us we were halfway inside the gate, with our backs to the school and our front completely exposed. Then it was a mess of limbs and blood sprays and senseless, irate faces. I emptied the magazine until the bolt action remained open, taking down as many as I could. On a subliminal level I knew Harrison was fighting off those who made it through the gunfire, which terrified me. He was strong and a good fighter, but there were so many, far too many. Then I felt an arm at the front of my waist, pushing me backwards, and the gate slammed shut in front of me. And somehow we were inside and the remaining Infected were trying to get at us through the bars.

“Are you bit?” Harrison shouted over their cries.

I found him scanning me, his jaw clenched with tension and fear.

“No,” I said and then did a mental awareness check of my body. Adrenaline can do amazing things to the body, including masking injuries. Determining that I felt no searing pain anywhere, I repeated, “No, no, I’m fine.”

He nodded, clearly relieved and looked back at the Infected.

I opened my mouth to ask him the same question when the door behind us, leading to the south hall, opened.

“Come on!” Doc shouted, his eyes wide with terror, beckoning us with a rapid wave of his arm. “Come on!”

Although there was no longer any reason, we raced up the steps and inside, where Doc slammed the door shut. The three of us stood in the dim hallway, speechless about what we’d just experienced, staring from one person to the next in awe. And that’s when I picked up on it. In reaction, I blinked in surprise, which Harrison saw.

“What?” he asked, tensely.

“It’s…It’s quieter in here.”

I guess the understatement caught him off guard because he broke out in laughter. But I was being serious. The peace inside was broken by panting, which came from me and Doc alone. Harrison still had yet to draw a deep breath despite the fact that we’d just run across our township and stared death in the face, literally. Stress alone would naturally make you want to refill your lungs. Apparently, not with Harrison.

When our breathing steadied, Doc began to announce, “Mei and Beverly are-”

“Right here,” Beverly said, cutting him off.

The two of them appeared down the hall, slipping in and out of the dim morning light that came through the windows. They too were out of breath but had slowed their pace now that Harrison and I were inside. As they got closer I saw why they’d been running. In their arms were two large first aid kits. Apparently they thought we might need them.

“They’re standing,” Mei commented to Beverly. “That’s a good sign.”

“Hmmm,” Beverly said casually, leaving me to wonder if she was happy about it or couldn’t have cared less.

As they reached us, Doc fixed his eyes on the rifle slung over my shoulder. “So that’s why you left?”

I knew this was the question on everyone’s mind when I saw the distrust in their expressions. Again guilt ran through me and I could only nod.

“You risked your life for a rifle?” Mei asked. “Why?”

The memory of the bowing fence in the back of the school flashed through my mind, but I didn’t divulge any more than I had to. “I thought we might need it.”

They continued to stare skeptically at me and for the first time I felt the wariness usually reserved for Beverly shift to me.

Ironically, she was the first to act, stepping forward to demand, “Your jacket.”

Up until then I’d forgotten that I even had it on. She scrutinized it in typical Beverly fashion.

“It has a hole in it,” she informed me with an annoyed scoff, and motioned to it to prove her point.

But it wasn’t a hole. It looked oddly like a tear, one made by teeth. She came to the same conclusion as I had and her eyes shifted from the jacket to me as she took a step back. It was peculiar to see the fear and disdain she usually had for the Infected be applied to me. Suddenly, I was cast out by the outcast. Doc and Mei stepped away too. Harrison, however, stayed right where he was, next to me, and I appreciated his support. As everyone’s eyes began a sweeping inspection of my body, I did the same, lifting my arm and turning it over to examine the underside. But there was nothing. Not even a scratch. As I’d hoped, the leather had taken the brunt of the bite and saved me from certain death.

In unison, we breathed a sigh of relief, and catching on that we did this simultaneously, we broke out in laughter.

“That,” Doc said between chuckles, “would not have been good.”

Mei nodded in agreement. “We’d have had to quarantine you,” she said through a smile.

“Throw you in detention,” Doc teased.

“Now
that
would have been really bad,” I said and they laughed again.

Throughout this time, Beverly didn’t say a word, which wasn’t entirely out of the norm. It wasn’t her style to joke around with the rest of us. So it wasn’t so much her lack of participation that caught our attention, it was the fact that she had started backing up again.

“Beverly?” I said, tilting my head at her in confusion.

She looked like she was watching a shark in the water just off the bow of a boat. Her normally tanned skin had gone pale and her nostrils were flared as wide as her eyes.

“Beverly,” Doc demanded.

Still she didn’t respond.

Gradually, we followed her gaze and found it was locked on Harrison.

None of us had thought to inspect him. He had so much self-control, seemed so powerful and assured. We never worried about him, never considered for a second that he might be injured. But when Beverly backed up far enough that she hit the lockers behind her and could go no farther, we took a closer look.

Harrison wasn’t just injured. He was shredded. The white tee-shirt he’d worn since the first day of school had dirtied and warped over time. It now hung in strips from his shoulders, exposing the well-developed, carved muscles in his chest and stomach and camouflaging the wounds across both areas.

The terror that rose in the others for Harrison was far more intense than it had been for me, and with good reason. He was taller, bigger, and stronger, and was by a long shot a greater threat to their safety then they ever considered me to be.

“You’re one of them,” Mei said, stepping back, a look of sheer terror on her face.

“He can’t be,” I countered. “He hasn’t turned.”

Putting a defensive arm in front of Mei, Doc retorted quietly, nervously, “It could be taking him longer to turn than the rest.”

I gawked back at them, wondering how they could be so obtuse. Of course, one glance at Harrison pretty much summed that up…I was the one being obtuse, and still I couldn’t find it in me to back down. He wasn’t a threat and I had a rational counter-argument to point this out.

“He’s already been bitten, remember? The first day all this happened.”

Undeterred, Mei made a ridiculous assumption, ridiculous at that time anyways. “That’s why you refused to go to the doctor. They’d test your blood and determine you were…different.”

I was disgusted. “He refused to go to the doctor to keep us out of harm’s way. The Infected would have been crawling all over the emergency room. He was trying to keep us from getting caught in it, and this is the thanks he gets?”

Mei couldn’t seem to pull her eyes away from him. “It’s why you don’t feel any pain now…now with all those wounds.”

“If he was infected, he would have turned into one of them at the gate where he got those bites while trying to keep the Infected from getting in here and killing you!” I reminded them furiously, trying to contain my emotions. My shaking body told me that I was failing.

“He’s not one of them,” Beverly interjected in a hushed, anxious tone. I was surprised by her assistance…and then she spoke again. “He’s a carrier. He already admitted it.”

“What?” I was in shock. “When?” I demanded.

“
There’s enough danger in the world right now as it is. You don’t need me adding to it.
Remember, Kennedy? On the night the power went out. We were all sleeping in the hallway and he inferred that he was a danger.” Her head tipped toward Harrison. “You are, aren’t you? You are a danger.”

My head swung back to Harrison as my stomach sank. “He’s not-” I began but was cut off.

“Let
him
talk,” Doc said, half suggesting, half demanding. He then turned his attention to gawk at Harrison and shrug. “What are you, man?”

Harrison didn’t respond right away. I hadn’t moved from his side, just as he hadn’t backed away when they considered me to be a threat, and I would remain there in an irrefutable show of support. He stared across at them where they had formed a uniform line against the lockers, standing the farthest they could be from him without turning and fleeing down the hall. A great divide separated them from us, in more ways than just space.